Known prior art is the enclosed U.S. Pat. No. 5,848,928 of Wong which describes finger food tons (“eating utensils”) with texturized surfaces, but they appear to be permanently attached, not attached manually in situ by adhesive stickers.
Disposable paper based finger food tongs are described in the Jones, U.S. Pat. No. 3,407,927. However, Jones merely discloses folding a sheet of paper or plastic material to form opposite pockets with mid-facing pocket openings, which are not sealed for sanitary use, and then heat sealing or adhesive gluing of the left and right ride edges of each pocketed food holder before being cut into separate food holders. Jones also does not disclose adherable textured regions with free ends to permit pivoting.
Kaufman, U.S. Pat. No. 3,331,626, described finger tongs with open sided, unsealed pockets.
Known prior art also includes a loosely suspended ring that a thumb is inserted in, in a boxing glove, as noted in U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,595 of Alpert. However, the loose thumb ring of Alpert '595 is not a finger stability enhancing element, and does not constrict against the fingers, while still allowing the fingers to manipulate in using the tongs for holding objects, such as food, for example. Alpert required knotted wrist laces to hold the boxing glove on the hand. In contrast, in the absence of Alpert's knotted wrist laces, Albert does not stabilize a finger or thumb in place in a pocket of an object, such as a food grabbing set of tongs. Also, in Alpert, the fingers are not free and independent to manipulate an object.
Known prior art also includes a recent pending European patent application number WO 2012/117248 of Ly from the United Kingdom of Great Britain which describes disposable paper finger tongs which are coated and textured for better gripping. However, Ly does not show the use of a central patch of adhesive on a central portion the back of the textured sticker patch to reduce ripping caused by full surface adhesive pulling against thin paper tong material. Ly also has complicated pleats to compress multiple folds to prevent unfolding of the pockets due to the resilient bias of his materials. However, Ly requires an extra-long axis of the material to accommodate the folded pleats, as is clearly shown in Ly's FIG. 4, which excessively large areas 8 of adhesive, which are not required in the Applicant's present invention. Ly's fold lines are solely for the folding, not for sealing off Ly's pockets prior to use. Also, Ly's perforations are for scoring the edges of the pocketed handling implements, not for sealing off the finger insertion pockets prior to use.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,328,439 of Goldberg describes forming a safety fringe around the edge of paper product sheets in general, but Goldberg does not describe heat or otherwise sealing of folded paper pockets. Goldberg does not describe any custom method of manufacturing fringes, such as heated knurling.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,424,541 B2 of Crawford describes a chewable tobacco or botanical pouch made of porous paper with rounded, non-sharp smooth sealed edges 12 around various polygon or other shapes, but does not describe soft, injury preventive edges with irregular free ends extending beyond a seal parallel to, and in the vicinity of a periphery of a finger(s)/thumb insertion pocket or strap of a set of tongs, to promote tearing. In fact, Crawford seals his tobacco pouch 14 with a continuous, hardy smooth edged seal 12 that does not promote tearing of the pouch 14, because tearing will be detrimental to the contents in the pouch 14.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,842 of Chang describes a set of tongs with soft pads to clean eyeglass lenses, but the arms of the tongs do not contain any finger(s)/thumb insertion pockets or straps that can be used to manipulated an object, such as, for example, a piece of food.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,143,276 of Nichols describes folding paper to form pockets, such as envelopes, with flaps to fold the containers. However, Nichols '276 does not describe forming finger insertion tongs with finger(s)/thumb insertable pockets or straps, with unbonded peripheral free ends of edges, used to make soft, injury preventive edges for tongs.